Teachers’ union forbids after-school volunteering

ONTARIO - The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation has instructed its 50,000 members — in capital letters and a bold font — that they “WILL NOT” return to voluntary extracurriculars, leaving some teachers frustrated at the bid to take the decision out of their hands.
The union posted the directive on its website late Monday, with wording that goes beyond merely suggesting that teachers think twice before running after-school programs again, now that the Ontario government has imposed unpopular contracts on them using Bill 115.
The order comes despite pleas from Premier Dalton McGuinty that teachers restore clubs, teams and trips now that they no longer are in a legal strike position. The government has pledged to repeal Bill 115 now that it has used it to impose two-year contracts on teachers in public English-language schools. The deals reduce benefits, freeze wages and end the cashing in of sick days upon retirement.
The memo from the OSSTF states that, “while we are resuming our imposed contractual obligations and all of our duties in accordance with the Education Act, it has always been the position of OSSTF that the performance of extra-curricular activities is voluntary.” Yet the letter from president Ken Coran then cites a union decision made last month that if the government imposes contracts, “voluntary or extracurricular activities WILL NOT resume.”
Both the OSSTF and the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario will meet Wednesday with their executives to decide what to do next to protest the imposed contracts, including a possible one-day political protest, which the government says would be deemed an illegal strike if held on a school day.
The ETFO has used somewhat more nuanced wording to urge its 76,000 members not to run after-school programs, calling such a boycott “both appropriate and necessary” but stopping short of commanding members to do so.
Education lawyers say it’s unclear without a test case whether a union has the right to dictate what members do on their own time, but lawyer Eric Roher said he received frantic calls Tuesday from school boards across the province after learning teachers were being ordered to keep up their boycott of extracurriculars.
“It’s not straightforward at all,” said Roher, of Borden Ladner Gervais. He said the Mike Harris government had designated extracurriculars part of a teacher’s duty, making any collective boycott of extracurriculars a type of strike, but the Liberal government removed that from the Education Act in 2009, leaving extracurriculars in legal limbo.For the full story, click here.